Table of Contents

National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, 1985 (ICPSR 6844)

Alternate Title: NHSDA 1985

Principal Investigator(s):United States Department of Health and Human
Services. National Institutes of Health. National Institute on Drug Abuse

Summary:

This series measures the prevalence and correlates of drug
use in the United States. The surveys are designed to provide
quarterly, as well as annual, estimates. Information is provided on
the use of illicit drugs, alcohol, tobacco, and nonmedical use of
prescription drugs among members of United States households aged 12
and older. Questions include age at first use as well as lifetime,
annual, and past-month usage for the following drug classes: cannabis,
cocaine, hallucinogens, heroin, inhala... (more info)

This series measures the prevalence and correlates of drug
use in the United States. The surveys are designed to provide
quarterly, as well as annual, estimates. Information is provided on
the use of illicit drugs, alcohol, tobacco, and nonmedical use of
prescription drugs among members of United States households aged 12
and older. Questions include age at first use as well as lifetime,
annual, and past-month usage for the following drug classes: cannabis,
cocaine, hallucinogens, heroin, inhalants, alcohol, tobacco,
nonmedical use of prescription drugs including psychotherapeutics, and
polysubstance use. Respondents were also asked about health
conditions, substance abuse treatment history, problems resulting from
their use of drugs, alcohol, and tobacco, their perceptions of the
risks involved, and personal and family income sources and
amounts. Demographic data include gender, race, age, ethnicity,
marital status, motor vehicle use, educational level, job status,
income level, veteran status, past and current household composition,
and population density.

Study Description

Citation

United States Department of Health and Human
Services. National Institutes of Health. National Institute on Drug Abuse. National Household Survey on Drug Abuse, 1985. ICPSR06844-v3. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2013-06-19. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR06844.v3

Universe:
The civilian, noninstitutionalized population of the
coterminous United States (Alaska and Hawaii excluded) aged 12 and
older.

Data Types:
survey data

Data Collection Notes:

Data were collected by the Temple University
Institute for Survey Research, Philadelphia, PA, under contract with
the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The data and codebook were
prepared for release by Research Triangle Institute, Research Triangle
Park, NC, and the codebook was initially distributed by National
Opinion Research Center, Chicago, IL, under contracts with the
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

For
selected variables, statistical imputation was done following logical
imputation to replace missing responses. These variables are
identified in the codebook as "...LOGICALLY IMPUTED" and
"...imputed" for the logical procedure or by the designation
"IMPUTATION-REVISED" in the variable label when the statistical
procedure was also performed. The names of statistically imputed
variables begin with the letters "IR". For each imputation-revised
variable there is a corresponding imputation indicator variable that
indicates whether a case's value on the variable resulted from an
interview response or was imputed by the hot-deck technique. Hot-deck
imputation is described on pages 16-17 of the codebook.

Sample
weights were constructed following data collection to account for
sample households and persons who were not at home or refused to
participate. The household sampling weight is the product of four
stagewise sampling weights, each of which is equal to the inverse of
the selection probability for that stage. Two post-stratification
adjustments were made to compensate for differential response rates
across demographic subgroups and residual deviation of selected
demographic characteristics of the sample from parameter data (based
on the 1980 Census).

To protect the confidentiality of
respondents, all variables that could be used to identify individuals
have been encrypted or collapsed in the public use file. These
modifications should not affect analytic uses of the public use
file.

Revisions involving the editing of recency-of-use variables
and removal of ineligible respondents were made to the original 1985
National Household Survey on Drug Abuse (NHSDA) data file to make it
more comparable with later NHSDAs. This resulted in several
differences between the original and public use files. Although
differences in prevalence estimates are generally small, estimates
contained in the National Institute on Drug Abuse publication, 1985
NHSDA MAIN FINDINGS, cannot be replicated using the public use
file.

For some drugs that have multiple names, questions regarding the use of that drug may be asked for each distinct name. For example, the use of methedrine and desoxyn are measured separately in this study even though they are both methamphetamine.

Methodology

Sample:
Multistage area probability sample design involving four
selection stages: (a) primary areas (e.g., counties), (b) area
segments within primary areas (e.g., blocks or enumeration districts),
(c) listing units within area segments, (d) sample households within
listing units, from which one eligible resident (if any) was
selected. The three race/ethnic groups were: whites/others, Blacks,
and Hispanics. Minorities and younger household members were
oversampled. The four age groups were: ages 12 to 17, 18 to 25, 26 to
34, and 35 and older. The probability of selection varied with the
composition of the household for different age/ethnicity groups and
with the number of residents within the selected age group.

Data Source:

personal interviews and self-enumerated answer sheets
(drug use)

Extent of Processing: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of
disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major
statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to
these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

Performed consistency checks.

Standardized missing values.

Created online analysis version with question text.

Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

Version(s)

Original ICPSR Release:1997-05-16

Version History:

2015-02-03 Created a separate Questionnaire PDF that was extracted from the Codebook PDF.

2013-06-19 Updated variable-level ddi files released.

2008-07-25 New files were added. These files included one or more of the following: Stata setup, SAS transport (CPORT), SPSS system, Stata system, SAS supplemental syntax, and Stata supplemental syntax files, and tab-delimited ASCII data file. Also the variable CASEID was added to the dataset. Some other minor edits were made to improve the data and documentation.

1999-06-16 SAS and SPSS data definition statements
have been updated to include value labels and missing values
sections.